


To The End (Even if it's Tonight)

by Coldest_Fire



Series: Found, But Make it Gay [2]
Category: House of Night - P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Drink water kids- there's salt in these tags, F/F, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Other Neferet doesn't go back to being 16 because I hate that, She and Lynette are DATING because I'm not a coward, almost-character death, references to past abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27076171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldest_Fire/pseuds/Coldest_Fire
Summary: Rewrite of the ending of Found. Neferet faces off with the worst of herself to save herself and her lover for once and for all.~“I was weak,” Neferet agreed, “in my aspirations to be you. I want to make that right,” she took a deep breath. What she said next wasn't something she could ever be ready to hear. Not since may 1st, 1893. “Tell me, Emily Wheiler, did it hurt you like it hurt me?” There was something so human in the tears that beaded in her eyes, they didn't cause more than a moment's hesitation. “You remember it every time you fail and you see it in every shadow on your vision. There are days you remember so viciously that you send your children to block the doors, and I know that, because I am you.”
Relationships: Neferet (House of Night)/Lynette Witherspoon
Series: Found, But Make it Gay [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2081076
Kudos: 3





	1. Of Love and Relief

**Author's Note:**

> They ripped us off on no-homo-ing Neferet and Lynette. I had a friend try to explain it as maybe trepidation about making the villain queer, or to make the ending (which was basically the only part of Found I wasn't in love with) work. I think the first reason is completely absurd--having a queer coded villain in a Disney movie and having a character set for villainy whose (queer) love is what stops that is the complete opposite. And resetting her bugs me, for just SO many reasons. She'd finally found closure about her past. She'd finally found love and support. If anyone wants to tell me that taking away all of that is worth it to remove those traumatic memories, I have half a dissertation about that. It's like they're saying that the best thing for people with trauma is to lose all of themselves to get rid of it, not to find healing and closure. 
> 
> I'm both a psych major, and a person with trauma. Fuck that just so much. I would not want to be 16 (ironically the same age) to get rid of my past. I want to do what Neferet does here in this fic. Love the me that went through all that, rather than hate her for what she didn't do. Find love around me that doesn't hurt. My trauma is nothing like Neferet's, but the journey I wrote here is so much what I'm doing, and I hate that in canon, all that just....dies. 
> 
> So, on a less serious topic: I'm still making a playlist for this piece, but some of the songs that inspired me for this chapter were Song 3 by stone sour ("did I save you cause I know you saved me too"), 11:11 by In this moment ("when I lay down and die, at least I can say I loved"), Change the world by Finger 11, and Darkness by Disturbed. 
> 
> Here is my playlist for them (Still a WIP) https://music.apple.com/ca/playlist/found/pl.u-BNA6vbRFAMpmGP

_"I'm counting on you to protect her."_  
_"Till the end of the world. Even if that happens to be tonight."  
_ _~The Gift (5X22), Buffy the Vampire Slayer_

“It’s about _you_. With your consort safe, you can take on Batshit,” Aphrodite had said, but her words took an instant to sink in. Neferet’s shoulder still throbbed where Lynette had been hit. It was there was no distinction between their bodies, if one hurt, they both did, if one died…

If Lynette died, this world and the one before it would fall, somehow that felt right. Lynette had brought her back from the verge of becoming the monstress—it was only right she be crux of it all. “With you safe,” she spoke to Lynette, begging her with almost human green eyes to understand what she was starting to, “I will take on the person I—the person I was intent on becoming until I found you.”

Lynette’s lips jerked up into a smile, though Neferet still felt the roiling and twisting of fear insider her lover, like the writhing of her tendrils. Some of that fear was hers, but she had to say this now. There wasn’t a lot of time. “Lynette, you saved all this universe--you saved me when you stopped me from becoming her. You are the only person, in one hundred-twenty-five years whose presence doesn’t feel like solitude, or a threat." She paused, to compose herself. She could not cry now. "All my life, I believed that caring, trusting, loving, was all weakness, that all I needed was the kind of power that warped her into what she's become. I thought that was safe and it’s never been enough. One Hundred Twenty Six years, and you’re all that’s ever been enough. It's your love that's saving them.” Neferet’s eyes were misty, but no tears fell. She knew if she started, she would not stop. they didn't have long. 

“You give my your word you will keep my dearest safe?” she asked the others in the circle, who fisted their hands over their hearts, in a solemn promise.

“We’ll keep her safe. _You’ll_ save her,” Zoey corrected her, _Zoey Redbird,_ who she’d killed without a second thought.

“If I survive this, I will be different,” she promised. She knew she wouldn't. She knew the monstress enough to be sure of that, she just needed Zoey to know that she wanted to do better than she had killing her to use her as the poster child for her war. The bar was so, so low. She hoped to be remembered for what she wished she'd had time to become. 

“You _are_ different,” Zoey replied, “and I know because you can leave the circle. Only those who Nyx lets through can enter and leave when they choose to,” she gestured to the bonds of the circle.

As a High Priestess, of course she was familiar with Nyx; it still shocked Neferet that she’d let her back in. after starting a war, creating a species of monsters, corrupting her own House of Night and loosing the monstress, Nyx still saw who she wanted herself to be, and not where she was. The acceptance should have felt alien. It instead felt like the love that had brought her here. She wished she'd known earlier what it was to live fuelled by love and not fear.

“Then I am going to take a step, and hope our Goddess will watch over what is to be.” She shuddered, and forced her shoulders back, biting back the fear that she was wrong, that she was still somehow an aspect of the monstress, and Nyx knew what she didn’t. Worse yet, she could be right, and this was the last she’d ever see of Lynette. Her eyes swept over Lynette, clutching her shoulder and shivering and still believing in her every bit as much as she had at Balmacara Mains. She memorized her so she could take her face wherever she went, assuming she wasn’t condemned into inexistence.

“Lynette, I—I love you,” she breathed. She couldn't go until she was sure Lynette knew. 

Lynette’s eyes were full of tears when she took Neferet’s hands, and after a couple attempts at speech, she finally said, “I've _felt_ you. You love so strongly, it’s _blinding,_ Neferet. And I've loved you since that night in the other universe. Maybe earlier, and I hope you can feel me, when you go out there.” Her voice was lost in her throat, and she said what she couldn’t in words in one final kiss, until Neferet could only feel the softness of her lips, the warmth of her heart, and the droplets of tears on her cheeks, from hers or her lover’s eyes. They were the same eyes, the same heart. Part of her would then live through this.

She didn’t think about passing through, but about the warmth, the safety she felt with Lynette, the unspoken pride Lynette felt for her, that she'd changed so much. The circle let her pass without hesitation.

***

Neferet walked toward the monstress, glancing back when her chest tightened, and her lungs constricted. There the circle stood, surrounding Lynette. Though her shoulder still throbbed, her warmth filled her chest, as though it armoured her from the inside. All she needed was for Lynette to live through this. Those scarce moments with her were worth her life. The others that encircled her would protect her. They would be the kind of family that neither of them had ever known. She wanted that for her.

Perhaps they were family to her in ways she barely understood. They came to her aid when she needed them most. They cared—initially for the fate of their world, but it had brought them to care for Lynette, and then her. She’d never had a place where people loved _her_. Not idolized a high priestess, not wanted her, and not tried to make her into whatever they thought was her place. If she died for that, she could say she’d lived. She meant what she said, Lynette was enough.

Enough to stop living in fear, building walls out of borrowed power. Letting herself be known, loved and love was more terrifying than facing the monstress. Somehow, it set her free of the part of her that became that. Finally, there was no part of the inhumane goddess left in her.

After one final glance, mooring herself in the understanding that she was not alone, she didn’t falter, didn’t hesitate. The bullets whizzed by, but didn’t strike. All that could touch her was the darkest version of herself, and all she could do was kill her. Cold and dead, she’d still have a warmth the monstress couldn’t claim. The bullets that passed her by whispered in each near miss that the Goddess wanted her to have this chance. Neferet just hoped it would be enough that when this ended she’d be able to await Lynette somewhere they could be together again.

Everything she did, she did for love. To her that was enough.

Some of her blue eyed tendrils detached from the warriors—loyal to the end—but Neferet waved a hand, “stay with the warriors, my children. Protect them.” It almost felt as though they loved her. Maybe they were just an extension of her, and not their creator.

Her voice finally drew the monstress’ attention, when she was close enough not to have to raise it. She looked like an abstract parody of Neferet. Her head swivelled like that of a mantis, lips peeling back to bare her teeth—the closest she could come to smiling. “We had hoped you would come to us of your own will, and we would not have to drag you out from under your rock ourself.”

“Kalona, thank you for holding her off. I have to do the rest.” She addressed the warrior. Her hand skimmed the healed scar from releasing him, as if to thank him for healing her as well. She could not have done this if she’d bled out. He did not move far away, just to a corner of the wall, out of earshot, but not the range he could throw his spear. Now, as Aphrodite had said, it was all on her.

Neferet got as close as she could without reaching the range of her double-bladed spear. “We were even going to ask you if you’d join us, but your children have been such an annoyance we cannot abide,” she hissed, “Have you finally come to die?” She cocked her head. Neferet doubted she could understand self-sacrifice.

“I want to live,” Neferet admitted, “Neither of us have had so much to live for, but I don’t know if I will.” Her voice showed no fear. She didn’t waver. “I've come to learn what makes us different.”

The monstress’s lips peeled back further into a toothy, fanged grin, making visible her mouthful of barracuda teeth. Neferet forced herself to stand her ground. “Here is what makes you so tragically weak,” the monstress leaned in, as though this was some great confidence she didn't want Kalona to hear, “ _power_ , weak one. You couldn’t give up a human to become a goddess. The human makes you weak. It’s a mercy we’re going to kill you before it does.”

“I was weak,” Neferet agreed, “in my aspirations to be you. I want to make that right,” she took a deep breath. What she said next wasn't something she could ever be ready to hear. Not since may 1st, 1893. “Tell me, Emily Wheiler, did it hurt you like it hurt me?” There was something so human in the tears that beaded in her eyes, they didn't cause more than a moment's hesitation. “You remember it every time you fail and you see it in every shadow on your vision. There are days you remember so viciously that you send your children to block the doors, and I know that, because I am you.”

Before the monstress could refute it, she shook her head, and continued. “No one ever apologized to you for it, did they?" She asked, not waiting for the scorn that would come. "I’m sorry they left you in that house alone. I'm sorry for every moment of what he did to you,” she didn’t want to focus on the details, or the myriad of individual crimes that transpired that night, “I’m sorry all your mentor assured you of was that you’d never have justice, and that making it for yourself was wrong, and I’m sorry for every year of fear and loneliness, every day that you somehow feel no different than Emily, bloodied and beaten and afraid. And I’m sorry you took her scars, and made your home in them, because the depths of your suffering was somehow safer to live in than to leave.”

The feelings around her flooded her. Lynette didn't overwhelm her with sympathy so much as a promise: when she hurt, she wouldn’t be alone. It shielded her better from those memories than the monstress’ power could. “We have never needed the apology. We lost the weakness to hurt when we killed our father for what he did to us,” she narrowed her eyes, offended that Neferet thought she needed reparations. 

“Our…father?” The words barely fell from her lips, as she was forced to think of what happened to her other self. The two of them danced along the blade of a razor. She’d feared her father’s attention enough to enter a scandalous engagement with Arthur—one she’d entered blind to his intentions until there was a hand around her throat, and another on her thigh. The future was no better when she didn’t escape Wheiler house. “Not Arthur?” The words were hardly audible. Her lungs had to relearn to find air. Both men were dead. It was just one more thing tugging at the edges of barely healing wounds. She was never safe there.

"Arthur?" the monstress mirrored her shock, “Arthur was weak, he only abandoned us, just like Camille, and Alice,” she grimaced, as though their mother’s name was particularly distasteful, “Arthur was a spineless worm, the last person who ever got close enough to abandon us.”

Still trying to process that her mirror didn’t know what Arthur became—or else her Arthur was a different beast entirely—Neferet took another cautious step toward her. “Alice,” she said slowly, “did our mother die when you were fifteen, with our brother?” she asked.

“Abandoned us. As we have said. Are you trying to stall us with your needless splitting of hairs?” Her upper lip curled back in annoyance, “she was not there, nor were the servants, the fiancé, or the friend. We were alone. It was the only gift we were given that night. We learned what we could trust.” The words came out warped, hissed and snarled, and Neferet stood silent, trying to process them. She was thankful that she’d been abandoned alone, the night she was raped and beaten. The night she _died_ , as far as both Neferets had been concerned.

What jarred Neferet was that she’d have agreed a month earlier, as horrific as it now sounded. “You died alone, Emily," there was no expression in her voice. Hearing the words--knowing it applied to both of them was hard enough. "All this is because we knew only two ways to be safe: to be created or destroyed. You created yourself, didn’t you? You created yourself in his blood, and this is its legacy. You're her revenge and her requiem. I know what you endure every day you try to create yourself a goddess so you don’t have to feel how much of _her_ is left. I’m sorry that meant embodying her suffering.”

“Do you seek to destroy us with more meaningless condolences?” The monstress demanded, her green eyes sparking, incredulous.

“I can't destroy you. You can. Destruction was the other choice, Emily. He could never touch us if nothing could. It’s what you’ve done every time you’ve tried to create something. Somewhere along the way, every part of you was a weakness you couldn’t abide. You couldn't stand the parts of you that didn't fear." Before the monstress could remark that she didn't know fear, she explained the difference. "If I die, you will reach the utmost of power, and there will be nothing there. No friends, no family, and no love. Everything you do is only to replace that endless fear with nothingness.” Neferet knew exactly when she lost that hollowness, with Lynette in her arms, tasting her. Lynette asked her if she really _hurt_ so much, and promised she wasn’t alone.

It was the first time she knew love. “I know your hollowness, and I know your exhaustion. So I give you Emily’s choice again, to be created or destroyed." She knew herself enough to hope the monstress wouldn't simply drain her dry and create herself greater with the power than coursed through her. " I know you--we-- have often wanted it over, wanted to finally rest, and I love you enough that I would give you that.”

“You _love_ us?” She laughed, her throat grating and barking out the word as an inhuman sound. It was just as foreign.

“Yes,” Neferet breathed, “love is all that ever took away the hollowness. Can I spare you that? Can I—as the rest of you let you rest?”

Her eyes met with the monstress’ for a moment, and it was the only part of her Neferet recognized. There was some small, terrified part of Emily that was left in her to release. Despite the threat to her, her lover, and her world, she realized the only thing she could do to spare this pitiful creature, more monster than goddess, was to love her enough to want her freedom. Loving the worst of herelf. She wished Lynette knew that she'd taught her that, that she was the one who'd saved both of them if this worked. The monstress’ grip on her spear all but dropped, letting it hang limply at her side.

Neferet took the spear, between the monstress’ pallid spidery fingers, and thrust it through her hollow chest with all of the strength in her body, driving the horned tip into the brick of the wall. “You can rest now, Emily," she assured her, "you can find some relief."

The monstress’ eyes widened, and blood sprayed in flecks from her lips, “you…how are _you_ killing us?” She asked, “we are not weak. We are immortal!”

Neferet didn’t have a concrete answer. She didn’t know how a vampyre was killing an immortal with a spear. But she did know why the monstress was dying, “because this is rest without the horrors you expect for showing weakness, and that is what we want above anything. I hope, laying down your spear and letting me in grants you some clemency. I hope Nyx sees what you are doing.”

Her chest was tight, and the tears pricked in her eyes. Neferet watched the monstress start to fade, give up the power, just as she had to one who wanted only to love her. Her eyes flickered shut, and Neferet could no longer see the faintest strains of Emily. _They were free_. There was something so bittersweet in this, that the only love she'd ever accepted was death. The monstress’ only salvation was her destruction. “I love you, Emily,” she choked out. “I’m sorry.” And she was. She was sorry the monstress had thrown away her chance to love Lynette, and the chance to find companionship, even family within the House of Night. She was sorry there was no way for her to find that in this life. All she hoped was that this brought her relief.

The monstress’ eyes flicked open, pure black, with no hint of green or white left in them. With her fading strength, her spidery hands seized Neferet, and pulled her onto the other end of the spear. As the air rushed from Neferet’s lungs, and she looked down to see her own blood on the spear, then the monstress’ eyes that bore into hers, completely inhuman. “I told you your weakness would kill you.”

But Neferet didn’t feel weak. She didn’t feel pained, or frantic. She wasn’t afraid as the monstress was, or angry. She hadn’t expected her to let go. Lynette had almost walked into her own destruction with Neferet, before Neferet let go. She didn’t love the worst of herself because it was easy, or because she deserved it, but because love was all that could save her, and she felt for the girl who had spent a century afraid. As she slipped away, she felt her lover with her, so strongly that it was like Lynette filled her chest. She'd been right that when she died, she would not be hollow, even with the spear in her chest.

She’d leave this world full of everything that saved her.


	2. A Lover's Plea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The same conversation, as heard by Lynette, and her lament that somehow, some part of her lover was beyond saving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this was written in the summer and just now edited. Please harass me for the next chapter, because it only has one more, and I want to finish this fic. This chapter brought to you by Always by Panic! at the disco (when the world gets too heavy put it on my back), Change the world again, and Relief by Sixx Am.

Lynette had trouble staying composed after Neferet left. Her last words to her were that she was proud of her, and she’d told the truth. Neferet had met her as a different person than she’d become: a powerhungry, war-mongering High Priestess, who had become her lover. Her protector, who’d let her into her head without a second thought to protect her from the monstress. Lost her chance at immortality, because she wouldn’t sacrifice her.

All these years, she’d never believed most people could really change. That was one of many reasons she’d ghosted everyone she knew each time she started over. If they were still around, she wasn’t _different_.

“This isn’t going to end well,” Aphrodite whispered, looking to Zoey for confirmation. Lynette wasn’t sure why other were hiding it, as though they thought she didn’t know. Neferet didn’t feel afraid, but she felt certain, and that was worse. That meant she knew how this was going to go down, and that would be impossible if she expected to get out alive.

“She’s sacrificing herself,” she barely got the words out, Zoey and Aphrodite looking away, a little alarmed that she’d heard. They were trying to spare her feelings. Lynette was no fool. Whatever it took now, she had to try not to be afraid. Neferet would feel it. She tried to just think about their time together. To be thankful that this immensely powerful, larger than life vampyre with walls to match let her in, if only in time for the end. Neferet was dying for her. All she could do was love her, so that there was a reason almost worth the price.

Her eyes beaded with tears as James—she was given to understand that was what they called the blue vampyre archer—added, “it’s hard to believe, especially as one of the people right beside her when she went dark, but she’s _right.”_

The dam broke. She wasn’t this frustrated with him. She was feeling too much to respond and not react. “You never knew her like I do” she insisted, “all she needed was something worth fighting for” It didn’t bode well that the warriors and the tendrils were all standing down, the guns come to a ceasefire. None were close enough to hear them, thankfully. Neferet wasn’t ready to talk about the things she had to talk about with the monstress in front of an audience. Zoey ordered the warriors to go back Dragon, but Lynette didn’t spare them a glance, she just watched. There was only a moment’s hesitation, and then a flood, as though some barrier had shattered, then it was like she was there, somehow. Beside her, though she didn’t move, and Neferet didn’t see her.

“Tell me, Emily Wheiler, did it hurt you like it hurt me?” She’d never heard that name before, but something in Lynette _knew_ it. She remembered that Neferet had told her about her life as a human trapped in a house with a monster. “You remember it every time you fail, and every night when you awaken, and you see it in every shadow on your vision,” Neferet continued, “You remember it every time you fail and you see it in every shadow on your vision. There are days you remember so viciously that you send your children to block the doors, and I know that, because I am you.”

Lynette had only seen one such day, right after they met the monstress. She’d been in the room anyway, she didn’t feel safe without Neferet anymore. The reaction was instantaneous. All of her children flooded up toward the door, and her eyes snapped open. Lynette couldn’t breathe. It was like she expected pain, expected something, and was backed into a corner. She didn’t realize until she was able to catch some kind of breath that the feelings, so intense they overtook her, were not her own.They were familiar enough, down to blocking the door.

She didn’t ask. Neferet would talk when she was ready, but she had a guess at what it could have been that sent her into that kind of panic.She knew what did it to her.

And then it all changed. “I’m sorry they left you in that house alone. I'm sorry for every moment of what he did to you. I’m sorry all your mentor assured you of was that you’d never have justice, and that making it for yourself was wrong, and I’m sorry for every year of fear and loneliness, every day that you somehow feel no different than Emily, bloodied and beaten and afraid. And I’m sorry you took her scars, and made your home in them, because the depths of your suffering was somehow safer to live in than to leave.” Her apologies were a deluge of confessions. The whole time, Lynette listened, and vowed anew to protect her Neferet from feeling that alone. Neferet was doing what she’d done. Apologizing. Neferet had needed that, she realized, enough that she passed it along to the worst of her.

“I’ll be your home, my Lady,” she promised, the words barely leaving her lips. She could feel the strength they lent her. “you don’t have to be alone with it again. Ever,” she vowed. Whether Neferet lived the next ten minutes or the rest of Lynette’s life, she wanted to give that to her.

“We have never needed the apology. We lost the weakness to hurt when we killed our father for what he did to us.” Lynette knew that voice so well. It was the same one her Neferet used on Sturdyvin when she was berating him for bringing along witnesses and not taking her commands seriously. The same tone she put on when she needed to be bulletproof, and it was the only way she could muster it. It worked on humans, and probably even other vampyres. It wouldn’t work on her Neferet, not when she knew better than any what the monstress had felt that lead her to that.

What Lynette hadn’t expected was the shock that hit her like the air rushing out of her lungs. “Our Father?” she asked, “Not Arthur?”

Lynette had made the assumption that it was both, when the monstress said it. They were not the same, their lives weren’t, their futures. She was certain both Arthur and Neferet’s father were bad people, capable of the things they never did in whichever universe they hadn’t had the chance in. She was certain, hearing the words her Neferet had spoken, hearing them rebound as the two exchanged names, that across every universe, every Neferet carried some kind of trauma, some scar. That all of them were paranoid and built power to build walls around themselves. It hurt to think of how many iterations of her were hurting.

Somehow, in millions of lives and worlds, hers had given up the quest for invulnerability for her. That didn’t escape her either. Hers loved her enough to save herself too.

She returned to the conversation, in time to hear the monstress cement what set them apart. “We were alone. It was the only gift we were given that night. We learned what we could trust.”

Neferet hesitated and Lynette knew why. She knew how hard it was to leave that behind. Her Neferet had crossed that line in a way that could never be taken away when she let Lynette feel her, when they imprinted. “You died alone, Emily. All this is because we knew only two ways to be safe: to be created or destroyed. You created yourself, didn’t you? You created yourself in his blood, and this is its legacy. You're her revenge and her requiem. I know what you endure every day you try to create yourself a goddess so you don’t have to feel how much of _her_ is left. I’m sorry that meant embodying her suffering.”

The monstress didn’t care for the apology, but Lynette felt her own Neferet, felt her sorrow, her empathy for the monstress. Lynette wished that was enough to save her. It _hurt_ to hear another lifetime of her lover talking about it like being left alone after being raped and beaten was some kind of hidden blessing, some secret truth. It hurt to think of her lover, having to decide if she wanted to live and become so cold and hard nothing could touch her, or if she wanted to disappear. It hurt to think that Neferet had been through that, and it took everything in her not to picture it, instead addressing the monstress, “I wish your Lynette had loved you. I wish you’d let her show you that you weren’t alone,” she told her, “I wish anyone loved you enough to become your home.”

“I can't destroy you. You can. Destruction was the other choice, Emily. He could never touch us if nothing could. It’s what you’ve done every time you’ve tried to create something. Somewhere along the way, every part of you was a weakness you couldn’t abide. You couldn't stand the parts of you that didn't fear. BIf I die, you will reach the utmost of power, and there will be nothing there. No friends, no family, and no love. Everything you do is only to replace that endless fear with nothingness.” Lynette shivered, and held tight to Neferet’s hand, hoping there would be something in her that heard. Something to be saved. Nothingness, and the kind of death that left you hollow and excavated was particularly horrible way to spend eternity. She couldn’t wish that on her, even if she’d already killed her Lynette seemingly without a thought.

Lynette felt Neferet reach out to her, through their bond, and squeezed her hand. “I love you,” she repeated, “I will love you for the rest of your life, no matter how many lives I have to find you in. You can feel that,” she whispered, her voice coming out choked with tears.

“I know your hollowness, and I know your exhaustion. So I give you Emily’s choice again, to be created or destroyed. I know you—we— have often wanted it over, wanted to finally rest, and I love you enough that I would give you that.” Lynette thought Neferet’s voice sounded particularly strong again. Not like the voice she used on Sturdyvin, but like she meant what she said. She loved that monstrous part of herself. That overgrown fear, and that violent paranoia. She loved the part of her that could never be satisfied, and was made of a million needle-toothed tendrils that sunk in when anyone reached her. Neferet loved the worst of herself enough to save it from itself, even when that was before her. Lynette loved her too.

“ _Nyx_ ,” she tried, not sure how one prayed to the goddess of the vampyres, especially as a human. “Nyx, I— I know you’ve forgiven Neferet, and she’s… she’s everything to me. I know you saw the part of her that was redeemable, the part of her that needed to be loved to be safe. I know you can see the love she has to give. She’s sacrificing herself for this world. For _me,”_ she trailed off, a lump in her throat, “if there’s a piece of the monstress in her, there has to be a part of my Neferet in the monstress. Some part of her that’s scared, and alone, and fighting like hell, and needs a chance to be loved to prove herself. I know she’s lost that. I know second chances aren’t something people who kill that many people, and threaten whole universes get, but… If I wish I could go back and protect her when she needed me. I wish we could save only that little piece of her.”

Neferet thrust the spear through the monstress just as Lynette finished her prayer, saying You can rest now, Emily, you can find some relief.”

The monstress struggled, couldn’t understand how she was dying. Lynette knew it as instinctively as Neferet did, when she said, “because this is rest without the horrors you expect for showing weakness, and that is what we want above anything. I hope, laying down your spear and letting me in grants you some clemency. I hope Nyx sees what you are doing.”

Lynette swore she saw a flicker, like moonlight in the handle of the spear, something fleeting, her tears spattered the ground. It was a melancholy relief, a sort of bittersweet feeling that filled and tightened her chest. Maybe this meant she’d get another chance. Maybe this just meant the monstress was over. “Nyx,” she she echoed her Neferet, “please… Please take Emily.”

_“I love you, Emily. I’m sorry.”_

There was a silence, a stillness while the monstress seemed to lose more and more energy, and slowly slumped, and then the world all slowed down so much Lynette lent as though she should have been able to pass through, able to stop it. The monstress grabbed her Neferet, and pulled her onto the spear, with a sick crack of flesh and bone, and finally said, “we told you your weakness would kill you.”

Lynette didn’t feel any of Neferet’s pain. She felt her warmth, and her peace, her love and relief that she had not become that. She felt her sorrow for the part of her that could never accept an ending, but never pain.

Back where she was sitting with Zoey and Aphrodite, she _screamed_. Neferet was at peace, but she wasn’t ready to lose her. Not like this. She got up, and ran to them. She couldn't die alone. She couldn't _die._

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah. OOf. I cried. There will be 2 more chapters. The next is the scene where Neferet talks to the monstress, but in Lynette's POV, and the third is my new ending. 
> 
> This was hard to write at times, and the dialogue took a few tries, for sure. It can be hard to love the bits of yourself that aren't perfect without either justifying them, or hating yourself for having them. In the end, the love that saves Neferet is twofold: her ability to love herself, even at her worst, enough to stop her, and her ability to love others, and to let people love her. The tragedy of the Monstress really is that she never found that. 
> 
> Uhhhh on a less sad note, I DO have chapter 2 written, so when I have time, you'll be seeing that soon, and the next chapter of Glass Memories (which is currently the only other fic for this ship) alongside a rewrite of the imprint scene. I will fill this tag.


End file.
